Conservation biology

Inventorying and monitoring of

Biodiversity;
I. Need
 Accelrating rates of biodiversity loss and the signning of various international
Agreements such as convention on the Biological diversity and Agenda 21
has necessitated the world`s biodiversity to the inventoried and monitored.

Defination

 Biodiversity inventorying is the surveying, sorting, cataloging, quantifying and

mapping of entites such as genes, individuals, populations, species, habitats,
biotopes, ecosystems and land scapes or their components and the synthesis
of resulting information for the analysis of processes.
II. Size
 The presence or absence, relative abundance and the patterns of variation of
thes biological entites can span from few meters to coountries, continents,
ocean basins and the biosphere.
III. Status
No inventory is ever complete because of addition of new entites/ new
variation (through immigration, or mutation ) and disappearence of entites
( through emigration, death or extinction ) as well as changes in abundance.
IV. Constant Composition
inventories are more than simply lists of names and numbers. They also
involve extensive application of systemetics ecology, biogeography and
management.
V. Usage
Inventories give a picture ( snapshot ) of the state of the biodiversity and
identify the key variables and bioindicators. Inventories also provide baseline
informations for the assessment of the change and they apply to all
ecosystems from fully natural to intensively managed
Monitoring
 It consists of repeated inventorying over time and space and hence it
measures change.
 Objectives of inventorying biological diversity is to develop strategic frmework
for predicting the behaviour of key varibles in order to improve management,
increas management options and provide an early waning of system change.

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 Importance of Inventorying and

monitoring of Biodiversity
These are used to assess the status of biodiversity and indicate changes at all levels,
from genes to ecosystem and landscape. These changes signal
improvements/deterioration in management and their sustainable utilization. Species
inventories are important in the selection of protected and threatened areas, endemic
areas and ecologically and economicaly important yet sensitive areas. Modelling of the
results of monitoring studies can help to predict the antcipated species changes with
changing environmental conditions.

Presevation Management Utilization

A knowledge of presence + abundance of an

organisms in given area from local to regional & global scale as a result of biodiversity.
Monitoring is crucial for presevation, management and utilization of national and global
biotic resources. Inventorying of genes, population, species, ecosystems etc. tells us as
to what is there and to some extent their relationships as well as, what is usefull and
what is threatened?

Spatial Distribution Of Biodiversity

Inventorying emphasizes spatial distribution of

biodiversity and helps to establish the origins of both harmful and beneficial organisms
from pollinators and biocontrol agents to potential new crops and medicinal animals,
plants, fungi and microorganisms.

Continued Management

Since monitoring assesses as to how + to what extent

biodiversity changes over time, it is essential for continued management of biodiversity.

Natural vs Human Induced Changes

Monitoring natural form significant human-induced

changes: also provides guidelines for managing ecosystems for optional sustainability.
Both short terms (days to months) + long term (years to centuries) changes should be
monitored in view of increasing ecosystems disturbance and landscape fragmentation.

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 Protected area monitoring crucial for continued updating of their biodiversity. Also
monitoring of human utilized areas crucial to determine as to whether utilization
is optimal.

Scales, planning and approaches inventorying + monitoring

1) The value of biodiversity findings depending on the relevance and importance of

the goals set according to level and geographical scale at which diversity is being
assessed and analysed as well as on the availability of adequate resources. The
accurate interpretation of results also requires an understanding of the ecological
dynamics of geographical area being monitored.

2) Targets of inventoring and monitoring include genes, population, species,

communities and ecosystems which provides comoarisons between areas,
keystone species, those which responds to environmental changes or those in
need of protection. Variables use to monitor can be first compositional e.g
abundance, cover, densities and biomass, second structural e.g. dispersion
range population structure or third functional e.g. demographic processes,
population dynamics and growth rates.

3) Availability of historical colletions of organisms provide important baseline

information as to a species changed its range, abundance and form over time.

4) Species inventories must use standrized methods wherever possible and

recognized sampling protocols. The data so collected and its analysis will be thus
comparable with other studies in other areas.

5) Voucher collections are essential for verification of fielddata and to provide a

permanent historical records.

6) Methods employed variable according to level of biodiversity and geographical

scale of the study and include first check lists of species, second relative
abundance, third population densities, or complete counts of individuals.
Behavioural, developmental and seasonal variations in abundance should be
taken into consideration in methods employed.

7) Population surveys focus on population size and its demographic aspects in view
of anthropogenic disturbance. Population size estimation important for all

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organisms to determine rarity or threat status. In case of large mammals, it is

essential for their optimal mangement. For very small populations, their minimal
viable population (MVP) size should be estimated as well as the chances of
population persistance by using population viability analysis (PVA). For
harvestable organisms, monitoring an dmodeling determine optimal and
sustainable utilization rates.

8) Remotes sensing systems important for monitoring vegetation diversity both for
wild life and human populations. The large scale distribution of vegetation can be
determine fron satellite imagery, seasonal and multispectral imagery is useful for
determining the composition and condition of the overstorey; while stereo
imagery radars or profilers for structure and biomass requiring some height
estimates. Samll areas can be covered with airborne videography and digital
cameras.

9) Monitoring of species, play a key role in assessing changes to ecological

systems overtime, thus playing a key role in their management and biodiversity
protection.

10) The inventorying biota both inside and outside, protected areas on long term
bases will provide valuable information for biodiversity conservation and
management.

INTEGRATED APPROACHES FOR MIGRATION OF GLOBAL BIODIVERSITY

LOSSES:

Carefully planned standardization and calibrated temporal and spatial

inventing and monitoring efforts are required by global community of nations in
shared international efforts at regional levels on mitigate the loss of global
biodiversity. Very few countries have programmes to make inventories of their biotic
to identify them as well as adequate resources to expand systematic and ecological
infrastructure and trained human resources. As a matter of fact monitoring of
biodiversity in many countries is almost non extinct.

BASELINE DATA (STUDY)

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Baseline data are fundamental units of an inventory which are crucial for
biodiversity conservation planning and management.

They include the presence and abundance of species or other units, other
dependent biotic data e.g. plant cover, important a biotic data variables and human
variables.

Biotic and abiotic data are important for meaningful interpretation about spatial and
temporal patterns in the distribution of biodiversity and role of natural and human
influenced environmental variation in their development. The data collected should
be robust enough to accommodate changes in the goals and scales of inventorying
and monitoring as well as help eve evaluate the status of rare and threatened
species include,

1) biotic data include RTUs (recognizable taxonomic units) which may or may not
equate to named species but are visibly recognizable entities. They are useful for
comparative localized studies but with distinct disadvantages in biodiversity
conservation.
2) PFAs (plant functional attributes) are readily observable features of vegetation
important for growth, physiology and survival of vegetation e.g. pollination
mechanisms, seed dispersal mechanisms and rooting systems.
3) other non taxonomic baseline data include broad vegetation structure as,
canopy height, crown cover, basal area and stratification of vegetation. These
may be modified by physiognomic attributes such as leaf size or tree buttressing.
Descriptive life forms as trees, shrubs or lianas are also recorded. Certain life
history categories as seed dispersal, breeding systems and phonology i.e.
seasonal appearance of leaves, flowers and other visible growth rhythms. For
animals such as non taxonomic base line data include, feeding guilds, different
life history stages (as larval and adult) and breeding systems.

While species and their richness and abundance are important taxonomic
characteristics of biodiversity for localities and regions but they are not useful for
ecological comparisons at the levels of continents and regions with different taxa.

At such higher scales, higher taxonomic ranks (orders, families and genera) may be
more appropriate.

Abiotic data:

Typical baseline data for inventory purposes include climate variable

as mean annual rainfall, rain fall season ability i.e. percentage of monthly rainfall,
mean annual temperature, minimum temperature of eldest month and maximum and

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minimum temperatures. Moistures are also significant in upper mountains regions or

certain desert or semi desert conditions.

Human related data:

The status and trends in human population’s density as

population density has a strong inverse correlation with biodiversity. So higher
population levels higher would be adverse trends in biodiversity. Types of human
influence and activities such as urbanization, industrialization, agriculture,
environmental pollution, infra structure development (rail, road network), trends in
deforestation, draining of wet lines, irrigation of arid and semi arid land etc.

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